


burning down

by Finally_Home



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Fahrenheit 451, M/M, Meet-Cute, Road Trips, Sunsets, Writer AU, Writers, but then my brain went off, changmin's a starving writer, heechul's just chaotic, it was really meant to be that, it's all kyuhyun's fault, yunho's sort of emo and very pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:54:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22985137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finally_Home/pseuds/Finally_Home
Summary: he feels like a scrap of paper in the midst of the flames, burning to ash.
Relationships: Jung Yunho/Shim Changmin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	burning down

The books lied. Being a writer is hard. Indeed, history takes the side of the victors, those who succeed and, most villainously, those who have never failed. Those who make it big and forget where they came from, neglect to mention the hardships of just starting out, of trying to find a foothold and make a name for yourself. Writing is hard work, and he’s about to die for it,

It’s been months since he’s published anything, and in fact, the only pieces he’s published so far have been serial stories for newspapers. Those don’t pay much, and he’s running out of money again, digging out loose bills from the pockets of his weathered jeans and scrounging up coins from the depths of the old tattered sofa in the corner of the room.

He’s actually too scared to reach too deep; the sofa had belonged to a couple of friends who liked to entertain, and he’s not sure he wants to know what the piece of furniture has seen over its lifetime. The clock on the microwave, its green letters glowing faintly in the gradually-dimming afternoon sunlight, reads 5:04, and with a groan, he hauls himself up from the ground, dragging his tired bones to the kitchen to find something to eat.

Not that there’s much in the first place. In the refrigerator, half a bag of white bread, a mostly-empty bottle of ketchup, a couple of eggs. In the crisper, a few softening cucumbers, a head of lettuce. In the cupboards, about ten cans of soup, the labels torn and faded, and a Costco-sized bag of ramen. He’s not sure he trusts the soup, or anything in the fridge, for that matter, so for the tenth meal in a row, he puts some water to boil and makes shitty instant ramen. For the first time in ten meals, he cracks an egg into the noodles.

“He can have little an egg, as a treat,” he murmurs softly, and then feels stupid for talking to himself. It’s Kyuhyun’s fault, really, for sending him all those memes over text because he doesn’t have instagram. Sometimes he can’t stand his best friend, but over the years, it’s only Kyuhyun who’s stayed. Everyone else found girlfriends or got too busy with school or found good jobs. On and on it went, until it was only him left, standing in the snow underneath the cold orange glow of a single streetlight.

His phone rings, and he fumbles with it with one hand while struggling to keep the noodles from sticking to the pot. “Yeah?” he says after a glance at the caller ID. It’s Kyuhyun. “I’m eating.”

Kyuhyun snorts. “You? With your pitiful cupboards? Come over, I have takeout.”

His stomach grumbles. “I wish, but I’m already cooking it.” A pause, shuffling from the other end of the line. “Tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Another pause. “Changmin.”

Changmin hums, putting his friend on speaker. His ramen is going to turn into mush if he doesn’t take it out of the pot right now. “What?”

“We’re having a bonfire tomorrow. I want you to come.”

He pauses, soggy ramen noodles hanging off the chopsticks in his hand. “Who’s we?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. Heechul and Donghae, Kyuhyun’s roommates. They regularly have drinking parties with Heechul’s friends from school, and Changmin rarely hangs out with them. He doesn’t see a point in getting drunk every day and waking up regretting everything. There’s also the fact that he would be able to write even less than he already does; he’s tried being Hemingway, and god knows it failed miserably.

“Chwang, I’m serious. We’ll be going upstate to some camping lodge. It’ll be us four and like, one of Heechul’s friends. We aren’t going to be drinking that much because, I mean, someone has to drive.”

“That someone,” Changmin interrupts, “will not be me. I’m not driving your drunk asses there or back.”

“No, of course not!” Kyuhyun agrees wholeheartedly. “So you’ll come?”

It wasn’t like he would have refused free food. “Yeah, whatever. When tomorrow?”

Kyuhyun shows up at his door bright and early tomorrow morning, at 8. Changmin’s barely awake, brushing his teeth groggily as Kyuhyun clatters around his kitchen, loudly making fun of his pathetic apartment. “And I thought it couldn’t get worse! Last time I was here, you at least had milk!”

“Fuck off, Cho,” he mumbles, rinsing his mouth. “I’m lactose intolerant.”

Kyuhyun lets out a loud laugh and throws a shirt at him. “Hurry up, we’re leaving in ten. Breakfast is in the car.”

The car is Heechul’s, a nice silver SUV, but the person driving is not Heechul. The person driving is a stranger, someone Changmin’s never seen before, not even at one of their drinking parties. He’s good-looking, though, handsome in a dashingly-casual sort of way, eyes crinkled at the corners as he greets them. Changmin flashes an awkward smile as he settles down between Kyuhyun and Donghae, Heechul having claimed shotgun.

“Changmin, have you met Yunho?” he says as soon as they begin to move. “This is Yunho, a childhood friend of mine. Yun, this is Changmin, Kyuhyun’s friend. He’s a writer.”

“Oh!” Yunho’s eyes sparkle, and he glances at Changmin in the rearview mirror. “What sorts of things? You don’t look a year out of college, it must be nice having the freedom to do what you want.”

He says this in one very quick breath, and Changmin blinks. “Uh,” he says, very intelligently. “Ye-- no-- I mean--”

“He hasn’t published anything good in a while,” Kyuhyun cuts in, elbowing him in the ribs. “He did a serial novel for The Times last year. It was pretty popular for a while, but humans are fickle.”

Yunho hums, and the car lapses into silence for a while. Donghae, characteristically, had fallen asleep sometime before the conversation started, and Changmin feels his eyelids drooping as well. Heechul’s already snoring in the front seat, and though Kyuhyun’s on his phone, Changmin can see him yawning away. He looks up and catches Yunho’s eye in the rearview again. The man smiles, and Changmin ducks his head, pulling up his hood to cover his face.

He doesn’t know when he fell asleep, only that he did. He must have, since he woke up to very loud rock music being blasted right into his ear. How had he managed to not notice the speaker right behind his head? With a groan, Changmin pulls his head forward. Lee Hongki’s voice sings about severely loving and severely losing, and he’s not in the mood right now.

“Oh, do you not like FTIsland?” Yunho asks. Changmin groans again, flapping his hand in the air. Yunho turns the music down. “I told you we should have picked something else.”

Heechul must be rolling his eyes, but he doesn’t respond. Changmin leans forward, towards the sun shining through the front windshield, and says, “It was just too loud.” He wonders how Yunho can manage to look so good in Heechul’s bulky sunglasses. The lenses are slipping down the bridge of his nose, and he has to occasionally bump them back up his face. Amber sunlight washes over Yunho’s face, emphasizing all the right angles and curves, and he looks ethereal, like a god.

Changmin worships no deity, but he thinks, with a painful lurch of his heart, that he may as well worship Yunho. The song switches to Wind, and Yunho hums along. Heechul turns his head to glance at Changmin. “Didn’t you cover this back in school?” he asks. “Why don’t you sing for us, Min?”

He panicks at the interested sound that Yunho makes, and promptly shrinks back into his seat. Yunho laughs, an adorable sound for such a handsome man, and does not press. Instead, he asks, “So you really are just out of school, aren’t you? Must be nice being young.”

“Don’t listen to him.” Heechul goes back to looking at his phone. “He’s only two years older than you. Went to school with Donghae.”

“Stop! You’re exposing my age!”

“So? You’re a twenty-six year old man, not a fifty-seven year old lady.”

“But my coolness! My mysterious aura!”

Changmin can’t help snickering, and Yunho immediately stops bickering with Heechul to meet his gaze in the rearview mirror again. “Ah,” he says, “you’re embarrassing me in front of Changmin. Let me have just a little bit of pride, Heechul.”

Something flashes in Heechul’s eyes, and he snorts before shutting up, uncharacteristically. Yunho settles down to drive, though it seems words lie behind his lips, which he keeps licking for some reason and it’s really making Changmin’s heart dance salsas in his chest cavity. Yunho takes a breath, and Changmin’s head snaps up, eyes on the back of his head, but then Donghae stirs, yawns, and Yunho closes his mouth again.

“Timezit?” Donghae mumbles, and promptly falls back asleep. Changmin lets out a quiet sigh through his nose, and Yunho smiles a bit.

“What sort of writing do you do?” he asks. “I mean, I know I already asked but, I don’t know, what do you want to write?”

Changmin doesn’t really know how to answer this question. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I always had a flair for the dramatic, but my professors didn’t like that. For some reason, all the professors I had were, like, character people. I like plot. Can’t develop characters.”

Yunho takes all of this in stride, nodding as if he understands everything though it’s clear he doesn’t. “But you can do what you want now, right? There are no teachers stopping you.”

“There’s life. Plot doesn’t sell, not when it’s already been done a million times.” Changmin leans against Heechul’s seat, eyes roaming over Yunho, still bathed in the early morning light. “Nowadays, people like characters. They like conflicted ones, and I hate doing that.”

“Why?” Yunho looks at him briefly, eyes a bit sad. “Do you not like to delve into yourself and dig up the pain you’ve experienced? That’s not how everyone makes characters, Changmin, and it’s okay not to do it like that.”

He pauses. “You sound like you write.” The silence hangs in the air for a bit, but Changmin does not elaborate. He, better than anyone, knows that the pressure of silence will force other people to talk, especially when they, like Yunho, seem to like to talk.

And he does. “I used to want to be a writer,” he admits slowly, eyes focused on the road in front of him. “But my parents didn’t, and I care about them too much to let them down like that.”

Changmin understands; he’d gone against his parents’ wishes as well, which is why he’s currently starving in a shitty apartment downtown. “What do you do now?”

“Electrical engineering.” He shrugs, fingers tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel. “I’m happy with it, but part of me never gave up the writer dream. I’m glad you can do what you want.”

They both lapse into silence. Yunho’s hands are really pretty, fingers long and slender, and he hums along to whatever song’s playing now, softly bopping his head to the beat. The sun rises higher, and just a hint of cornflower blue shows on the horizon. A hint of stubble lines Yunho’s jaw, and Changmin has to fight the tickling urge to runs his fingers along the roughness. He clenches his fist and leans back in his seat. Kyuhyun’s woken up by this point and is clamoring for food. Heechul hands him a bag, and he digs out a sausage biscuit, handing the bag off to Changmin.

“Did you just go to McDonalds?” he can’t help complaining, though he picks out an Egg McMuffin, unceremoniously dumping the bag into Donghae’s lap.

“I don’t hear your fridge complaining, bitch boy,” Kyuhyun says through a mouthful of biscuit. Yunho laughs, and Changmin almost chokes on his muffin. “Literally, he has like a Costco bag of ramen, like four eggs, and a couple of rotting cucumbers. This man lives in destitution.”

“I’m a starving writer, Mister Official Law Student,” Changmin snaps, ripping a hunk out of his food. “I can barely afford rent.”

Heechul reaches into Donghae’s lap and grabs himself a sandwich. “I keep telling you to quit that job. Bartending clearly isn’t your thing, Min. Don’t force it. There are plenty of other side jobs out there.”

Yunho’s eyes flicker to him again. Changmin flushes. “It’s fine,” he says shortly. “I like it, and it pays. That’s enough.”

The car is uncomfortably silent for a while. Then, Yunho groans childishly. “I need to pee.”

He ends up at the urinal right next to Changmin, even though there’s no one else around. Changmin glances at him; he’s actually a couple of centimeters taller than Yunho, but the older man’s aura intimidates him a bit. Not intimidates. He’s ashamed of his inability, as a writer, to describe emotions. Yunho just makes him feel nervous. Somehow. In a heart-fluttery way. And he’s not sure if he likes it or hates it.

Yunho finally speaks when they’re washing their hands. “If you ever need a meal or anything, just call me. I have tons of food at home that’s just begging to be eaten.” He smiles sheepishly, drying his hands. “I don’t cook much.”

Changmin hates being in debt to others, but somehow, he doesn’t mind it so much when it’s Yunho. He watches Yunho type his number into his phone - how can his fingers be so pretty? - and almost forgets to type in his own number. He saves his contact as simply ‘Shim Changmin’ and sees that Yunho’s put his name in as ‘jung yunho food’.

He laughs out loud as they leave the bathroom, and Yunho holds the door for him, grinning. “I’m serious,” he says. “If you need the food, just come over. I can’t cook to save my life and anything you make will be a thousand times better than whatever shit I make. Don’t feel indebted or me or anything. I’d rather you make something edible out of everything I have than having it rot and expire.”

He doesn’t know why he agrees, or why Yunho’s smile makes fireworks explode in his chest, but it does, and isn’t life just like this sometimes? 

Sometimes it is, just sitting in a car with your best friends, singing badly along to the hottest pop song on the radio, watching a handsome man drive with a smile on his face. The endless blue sky stretches on, and Changmin feels eighteen again, driving off to nowhere with his friends, having the time of his life being an idiot, and sometimes life really is good.

\---

They reach the campsite before the sun sets. Heechul had replaced Yunho as the driver about halfway there, and Changmin had spent the rest of the ride sleeping, unfortunately, warm and snuggly between Donghae and Kyuhyun. He awoke to Kyuhyun shoving him out of the way.

“Are we there?” Donghae’s sleepy voice mumbles. Changmin grunts in reply and peels himself out of his seat. “Let me sleeeeeeep.”

“Nope, no chance. You’re going to miss dinner.” Heechul dives back in to drag Donghae out, and Changmin stumbles facefirst into Yunho’s broad, muscular back. He hates himself for noticing, even as Yunho turns around with an apologetic laugh, throwing an arm around Changmin’s shoulders. He has neither the energy nor will to resist and lets himself be steered into the quaint little cabin and plopped down at the table.

Yunho wasn’t lying. He really cannot cook. Changmin spends the better part of five minutes watching him trying to figure out how to turn on the stove and finally can’t take it anymore. “Let me,” he says, taking the pan from Yunho’s hands. His fingers brush against his, and an electric thrill goes through Changmin’s entire body. Yunho smiles at him, eyes crinkling up prettily, and stays beside him, watching his shaking hands pour oil into the pan, his trembling fingers turn the stove on. Changmin trembles like a leaf in the wind, uncontrollably, and drops two eggs on the floor. When he bends to clean it up, Yunho meets him halfway there, rag already in hand, and they bump heads.

He barely feels any pain, for the dazzling smile Yunho sends him. And as if it was the most casual thing in the world, Yunho puts a hand on his leg. “Do you want me to leave?” he asks softly. “I wanted to watch you cook, but I guess you don’t like being watched?”

“N-no.” Changmin hates himself for stammering. “I mean, it’s fine. I just, not many people watch me, you know?”

What did he just say? It makes zero sense, but Yunho smiles again, and Changmin thinks he might drop dead from cardiac arrest. They clean up the spilled egg, and Changmin takes a deep breath before cracking the next one right into the pan. Yunho’s eyes widen and Changmin feels a smile tug at his lips. The man really can’t cook, then, if he’s so amazed by a fucking egg.

“Oooooh, look at the little lovebirds!” Heechul’s obnoxious voice rings out in the empty space. “Domestic cooking time!” His voice cuts off abruptly, and Changmin guesses that Kyuhyun probably shut him up with a chokehold. Yunho chuckles and shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes. 

“He’s really annoying sometimes,” he says, and Changmin hums, reaching for the salt. “How did you get to know him?”

“Kyu.” Changmin dares to glance at his face. Yunho’s currently very intently watching the egg bubbles pop in oil. “He was my best friend from school and ended up being roommates with Heechul and Donghae in junior year.”

Yunho hums, leaning against the countertop. “Pity,” he says slowly, as if savoring each syllable of the word. “We could have met earlier.”

The implications have Changmin’s heartbeat pounding, and his throat suddenly goes dry. “Um,” he squeaks out, and Yunho laughs. He feels a hand on the small of his back, and his brain short-circuits. “I didn’t like their parties.”

“Me neither.” Yunho seems to have no plans to move his hand, and Changmin feels his face flush with more than just the heat from the stove. “Too loud, too alcoholic. I can’t drink.”

“Really?” Changmin’s spent his entire life with people who can drink. “I can, I just don’t like it. It makes the words come less fast. Less… good.”

Less good? Really, Shim? But Yunho seems to find it funny. He still doesn’t move his hand, and his body heat is burning a handprint into Changmin’s back. But he doesn’t mind; in fact, he hopes it stays. It won’t, of course, and Yunho moves his hand as soon as Changmin shifts, but the cold left after the warmth of Jung Yunho’s hand disappoints him, and he wants more.

He’d never admit it, but he does. He craves it so much, in fact, that he sits next to Yunho during dinner, feeling the man radiate heat. Thank god it’s autumn, or else he’d be sweating like crazy. Yunho also has nothing but praise for Changmin’s cooking, and he blushes like a little schoolgirl. Kyuhyun kicks him under the table, grinning evilly, and Changmin kicks back hard, accidentally hitting Donghae in the process.

Donghae howls. “If you’re going to play footsie at least tell me first!” Yunho’s smile freezes in place, and Changmin could bash Donghae’s head in.

“We were not playing footsie!” he yells back. “He kicked me!”

“Stop kicking him!”

“It was an accident.”

“Cho Kyuhyun, nothing you do is by accident and you know it.”

“My leg!”

“I’m sorry?”

In the midst of everything, Yunho bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard his entire face turns red, and he puts up his hands to cover his face. Everyone else falls silent to look at him, and he only laughs harder. In the end, he grabs Changmin’s hand and rushes from the table.

Changmin nearly trips on the table leg. “What are you doing?” Yunho doesn’t answer, only pushes open the door, and they emerge into the crisp air, the setting sun washing dark orange light over them. “Yunho, what?”

“I like you,” Yunho says in a rush, eyes still rimmed red from laughing so hard. “I like you so much that I want you to stay. Stay with me, Changmin. I’ll let you cook for me, hell, you can move in if you want. Stay, okay?”

His hands are warm, but Changmin’s ears are warmer. He can’t breathe, all his words stolen away by the mere sight of this man underneath the sun, and loses all his self-control, lunging forward to grab his face in his hands. But he stops before their lips touch, and they stay like that for a brief moment, breaths hot on each other, before Yunho finally pulls him forward, and an entire field of flowers blooms in his chest, and he holds onto Yunho like nothing else matters except him, his lips, because right now, nothing does, and it feels like fire, molten fire on his lips and in his chest, and Changmin wonders how easily he burns to ash under Jung Yunho’s touch, how easily he crumples and becomes alight, just another spark of fire in the wide world of flame.

And then the inspiration hits, and he pushes away from Yunho in a frenzy, digging through his pockets for his phone. Yunho watches him, baffled, but Changmin dials a number and connects to the fire department and says, “Hello, I need to know what temperature sets paper on fire.”

\---

Sparks fly into the dark night, disappearing into the void. Kyuhyun grumbles about the cold and wraps his tartan blanket tighter around himself. Donghae smacks him, and Changmin only sighs, leaning more into Yunho. Heechul rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe you actually got together,” he says.

“Wasn’t that the point?” Donghae asks. “I mean, you said he needed to find a boyfriend, and Kyu wanted Chwang to come out of his self-pity, and bam.”

“Whatever the case,” Yunho interrupts before the matter can go on. “Whatever the case, I’m glad it worked out.” He leans down, presses a sweet kiss to Changmin’s forehead, and everyone else groans. “Shhhh, this doesn’t concern you.”

“No,” Kyuhyun says, “it sure doesn’t.”

Changmin moves in with Yunho after they get back. True to his word, Yunho has an entire fridge full of food, and Changmin gets to work cooking for his ridiculous boyfriend. During the day, Yunho works at some big company across town, and Changmin types madly on his computer, working off of the one scrap of inspiration that came from kissing Jung Yunho for the first time. During the night, Changmin cooks for the two of them, and then they fuck around (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally) until it’s time to sleep.

And then, two months later, Changmin sends off his first draft to the publishers, and they respond affirmative. Yunho actually picks him up and whirls him around before kissing his breath away, and says, “Changdol, marry me.”

They get married in suits, in front of the courthouse, with no one but their closest friends around, and Changmin actually cries, breaking down on the pristine white marble steps, and Yunho consoles him shakily, tears swimming in his eyes too, and then their entire little group breaks, huddled in a tight hug, the wind blowing through their hair and scattering rose petals everywhere.

And the next day, his book is released to the public, and Yunho goes out and boasts to all his friends and colleagues. “My husband wrote that book! My husband wrote it!”

It’s an instant bestseller, and Changmin’s name skyrockets. He becomes a household name, a legend, someone to look up to, and no one would have ever imagined that he was once a starving writer, lying on the ground in a shitty apartment, boiling ramen when he received that phone call that would change his life.

“What really inspired this book,” he would later say, “was not the fragility of human life, as many English teachers will say.” He flashes a coy smile. “What inspired this, really, was how feeble I felt against the flames of life, just a piece of paper burning to ash underneath the light of the setting sun. As soon as I realized this, I knew I had to write it. I stopped everything I was doing and called the fire department, and I asked them at what temperature would paper burn. They said, well, let’s find out.”

“And you found out.”

“Quite clearly, yes. They said, Fahrenheit 451.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was actually meant to be a writer au where changmin asks the fire department what temp paper burns at, fireman yunho picks up and puts him on hold to do an experiment, and comes back and tells him, and then chwang writes f451
> 
> it was supposed to be short. i was not supposed to do this in lieu of chem hw ;;; and it was not meant to turn out like this! i tried to salvage it in the end but tbh i'm tired, it's 2:30, i have class tomorrow, and i still haven't finished my chem hw ;;; alas the life of a college student
> 
> crossposted on aff


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